


The Blood That Bends

by bardsandbeetles



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Romance, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:09:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29809590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bardsandbeetles/pseuds/bardsandbeetles
Summary: An AU look at Lucy's undead life after Dracula.  She has run for nearly one hundred and twenty four years from him.  Will he catch her, or will she finally have peace?
Relationships: Dracula/Lucy Westenra





	The Blood That Bends

**Author's Note:**

> an AU one shot Dracula/Lucy Fanfiction

She really couldn’t believe she was here.

She had been many places, but finally she felt utterly and completely safe.

The apartment was tinier than perhaps she would have had in the past but she didn’t mind. One hundred and twenty four years she had roamed this earth. She had taken many names, many jobs and many faces.

She had cut her flame like locks into a bob for the 1920’s, then grew it out again when that fell out of fashion.

She had danced in clubs in the arms of clumsy sailors, and comforted those same sailors as they drew in their last shaky breath.

She had prayed to God for forgiveness for her unspeakable actions. She’d been young and full of the curse’s power when she hurt those people. Those children.

She shut her eyes for just a moment and ran her fingers across the wood of the Parisian dresser. The wood grain was simple, classic, a blond color. The paint was peeling, she could feel that without opening her eyes.

Her apartment was right in the heart of Paris, by Pompidou Center and Sainte-Chapelle. It was a busy city. Usually vampires like her liked to be in the country away from everything else, only occasionally sneaking out for meals – but then she had learned the hard way that he could track her just as easily when she was out in the country alone. Ironically enough when she was mixed in with people she was harder to track.

As civilization grew and industrial and digital resources grew, she had gotten very good at hiding herself, a needle in the hay stack.

All Dracula would smell if he were to look for her was the City, and Paris was very wide and very old. Dirty air. Cars constantly moving, people brushing to and fro. Dogs yapping, unruly children running here and there and frazzled mamas tottering after them with arms full of groceries and shopping.

The redhead opened her eyes. Her little two bedroom apartment was 70 square meters and very charming, and was located near the Opéra Garnier, the Louver Museum as well as the Noter Dame Cathedral.

If needed a quick flight the Paris - Orly Airport was only a few minutes away.

A quick escape. 

That comforted her. 

She didn’t think she’d need it. The wolf dog hybrid, Raoul, would certainly alert her if she had any intruders, but then one never knew. He was so determined, her Sire.

After his ‘death’ and Mina’s abandonment, he had realized she was right in front of him the whole time, and that she could bring him back to full stature.

He was very weak now, only saved at the last moment by the strangest of occurrences. Like the novel reported, her Sire had been stabbed in the throat and the heart and he had turned to dust, and Mina was freed from his so called ‘curse.’ 

But as he sat there as mere dust, and Mina ran from him after the gruesome sight she dropped her locket – a locket that actually contained a bit of Lucy’s hair, which was a common trinket to have back in the 1900’s, especially since Mina was grieving Lucy, who had ‘died’. 

But Lucy was of Dracula, and the hair fibers called to him. Her bloodline called to him. There was something unspoken in the blood, something that refused to die.

And when the fibers hit the ash, a union was created, and a powerful unspoken magic was stirred.

And when the dust had settled – in the most literal sense – the Count found himself alone and alive. Or well, as alive as a vampire could be. 

And Lucy? Who had been decapitated herself and hidden away, a horror to the world?

Well, things came full circle yet again.

It was Mina who saved her with her tears. She came to the spot where her friend was buried, after all was said and done, and cried in grief and trauma over everything that had gone on – and the compassion in her friend’s tears – the indescribable love and purity in spirit – healed the redhead.

Of course she couldn’t tell her that. 

She had to let her think it was all over, the curse was over, and that she was dead.

But somehow she managed to get out and then she began to travel the world, to try and find a safe space against the rest of the world.

She hadn’t known he’d been trying to find her at first – how could she?

In her vampiric youth she had spent the first fifty years on a power trip of sorts, but eventually she began just trying to find her place and find a reason for being.

The first time she had spotted him was in 1925 when she was a jazz singer in America of all places. She was singing at The Yellow Pony and he swept in the way he always did. He never changed, ever. 

She did.

She did everything in her power to become something else.

Something better.

But she remembered the way he wove his way through the crowd, his tall 6’4 stature and deep shocking dark waves were laid neatly against his head. She’d thought she was hallucinating at the time, that maybe someone had slipped something in her drink – but no. 

There he was, tall and statuesque and charming even in his violent temperament, his intense blue eyes the color of crushed cobalt mixed with deepening navy, smelling of black lavender, woody vanilla, shades of pear and pine (just an undernote) and the tiniest traces of crocuses. 

For a moment he seemed as surprised as she was, and then…

Then there had been an almost knife-like smile to cut across those perfect chiseled features, and a flicker of indigo fire in his eyes and the hunt was on.

For the next hundred years or so, she would be his focus, not Mina.

He had lost Mina.

He had been wrong about Mina.

He had thought she was his perfect companion, perhaps even the reincarnation of his first love.

But even if that were true, the sable headed sturdy Mina had betrayed him. She could not love him for the beast he was, not truly. 

She was too pure in spirit, and that’s how she’d been released from the curse.

But Lucy?

Lucy had had her fair share of suitors, and she had had plenty of intimate moments with them. She hadn’t clung to religion the same way her brunette friend had, and it was one of the reasons he was capable of tempting her outside in the first place.  
She had feasted on children, as a vampire.

She was deplorable.

And even though she tried for the next one hundred years or so to re-invent herself there were things in her past she could not get away from, and he unfortunately was one of them.

The next time she saw him she was in Germany, 1952, outside of a bakery closing down for the night.

And again in 1980, Switzerland.

For a few years after that she was free of him. She hadn’t seen him for years and years and she let herself think perhaps the nightmare was over. 

She settled herself with a man named Dallas, and she began again – yet again. He owned a big ranch filled with cattle and sheep and horses and craved a simple life. He had a step daughter, Mandy, who was eleven, from a previous marriage that went south.   
They never spoke of marriage, it wasn’t on either of their minds, but he acknowledged her fear of the sun and let her be (she gave the excuse of having an autoimmune disorder and he seemed to believe it). He gave her peace, and for the first time in her life, she thought maybe she could settle down, she could rest.

It all was over in a matter of minutes.

They both were slaughtered by her Sire in the 90’s, within a matter of moments. 

“You are mine.” He had grasped her firmly by the throat and pushed her against the wall.

She didn’t need oxygen, but it was still terrifying. 

“And when I come for you the final time, this will all be over.”

“What have you done?” She’d managed, trying to claw his big hands away from her neck. It was no use. 

“I’m saving you.” And then he’d dropped her, and she’d crumpled to her knees both in grief and exhaustion.

“You were never meant to play house with them. You are a phoenix, you are a living flame, you are an atrocity and a beauty all in one. You cannot be a tamed. It is as laughable as a tiger being domesticated. I will not let you forget what you are. Art and pain. Monster and goddess. Do you know what you’d become, if you stayed? If I let them live? In the end, it would cause you more pain to see them crumple, whither and die.” He had grunted, then reached down and lifted her chin up to look into his face. “We are alike, you and I. Two sides to a coin.”

“I am nothing like you.” She had said in deep shuttery breaths. “I will hate you. Forever. You have destroyed the only happiness I have known.”

“That isn’t true and you know it. You have had plenty of happiness, little red.” He grinned and his fangs set just outside his mouth. “Every meal, every hunt. It was a primal happiness, but happiness still.”

“Liar.” She had spat. “Liar!”

“You will come to terms with what you are one day.” He had crooned, and then he was gone.

She had never forgiven him for that.

Raoul whined softly, bringing the redhead out of her memories. She petted his wiry hair and let herself breath in the cool damp November air. Paris was alive now, but in a month’s time it would be laden with snow.

She had had to learn how to carve out happiness without people. 

The life of the Nosferatu was lonely, but she was keeping them safe by keeping her distance. For meals she struck the petty criminals and the occasional (literal) animals. She learned never to take more than she needed, and she worked a night job – under an alias of course – and gave back when she could.

It was raining now, the smell of the city drifting up to her slightly cracked window and into her apartment. She could smell the flower shop down the road, roses and violets with splashes of iris in between the cool Fall rain. There was a certain woodsy undertone she couldn’t quite place, mixed with the occasional wafts of fresh bread. It wasn’t at all unpleasant. Romantic even, if she let herself think that. 

But of course she wouldn’t. 

She knew she wouldn’t be staying long. She’d only rented it for six months, and she’d see if she’d even stay that. 

Dracula was unquenchable in many ways – in sex and violence but also his pursuit of her.

He felt she had saved him, and would always be after it because of it. 

And so, she would always be on the run.

You could stop running, you know. You could just face him.

And do what? Her mind answered. We cannot kill him.

You know what. Her mind answered brazenly. It’s time. We have run enough.

She couldn’t believe her subconscious would even betray her like that, to recommend she stop running and face him. Let him speak. Let him try and convince her to be his companion.

It was unfathomable and yet…

she was exhausted.

Her mind was so worn out from trying to escape him, and also escape herself. 

In many ways he was right. 

She hated to admit that to herself but they were connected. They were very much the same. She’d tried to domesticate the wild out of herself but all she’d really done was repress it and he knew that.

Her wildness sang to him like a drum, like a pungent tasteful carefully aged whiskey. 

As angry as Lucy was with him, he was the only one to understand her and she him.

She dragged herself out of these thoughts and grabbed her favorite cranberry colored Burberry rain coat, kissed the wolf dog on the top of the head and left him by a roaring fire. He drowsed in contentedness. She left the apartment and walked until her hands were numb and her mind stopped rattling around in her brain like a feral animal. 

She stopped at a small night cafe, Jon Luc’s. Ordered herself a ‘midnight ice cream’ (covered in licorice flavored sauce).

She knew she would throw it up later – only blood gave her nutrition, but for the moment she missed the human moments. 

The smell of the rain was intoxicating now, the sound of it even more so.

Some people hated it. 

She found it a joy.

Tap-tap-tap, the unending natural symphony was hypnotic and meditation worthy.

She licked the ice cream carefully, and curved herself into one of the iron colored wicker basket like seats. 

“I thought I might find you here.” 

The smooth warm Romanian vocals almost caused her to drop her ice cream. 

Dammit. She thought to herself. I was so close.

“Is this your favorite spot?”

“Not anymore.” She grumbled, russet and chocolate colored eyes meeting his in irritation. “If you’ve found it.” She flicked a glance at the young boy running the counter. They were about to close up for the night, clueless at the danger they were all in.

Lucy got up swiftly then, and angled her body to be as cold as possible. She didn’t want trouble. She didn’t want death and pain and sorrow and drama. She tasted the rain and the ice cream flagrantly on her tongue and frowned. 

She remembered how she had had to arrange a funeral for Mandy and Dallas, and then how she couldn’t even go to that funeral, because it had simply been too painful and on top of that it seemed disrespectful for her to be there with their grieving families when she was one to cause their deaths, however inadvertently.

“Please.” He placed his large hand on her small, sparrow like wrist, and something in his eyes made her stay. 

She didn’t know what it was, but this time he didn’t come with arrogance or violence or a demanding nature.

This time when he asked her, she didn’t run.

Heaven and hell knew what that might cause.

She might regret it someday, but this time when his dark sapphire and burnt lilac hues met hers, there was something else there she’d never seen before, a need she did not understand. 

And so, she sat back down.

The consequences of that had yet to be determined. 

She hoped for once, it was not a mistake but for once she was willing to hear him.

Just. This. Once.


End file.
